Humanities and Social Sciences

History Program

Reconciliation: South Africa

Dr David Dorward

This is a supplement to South Africa: Nationalisms in Conflict, a volume in the VCE - LaTrobe Studies in History Series published in 1993. This supplementary essay focuses on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Desmond Tutu, and the importance for the New South Africa of understanding the past.

Desmond Tutu at La Trobe University in 1993.

South Africa remains a deeply divided, socio-economically polarised and violent society, characterised by mutual fear and suspicions. Its recent past has been one of conflict and oppression. Temptations of vengeance and denial are ever present. The cultural shibboleths that justified gross inequalities and domination of the Black majority haunt White consciousness. The spectres of old stereotypes permeate just below the surface. Yet, it is not the level of crime or recurrent violence within this highly traumatised society, but the achievement of political accord and reconciliation, that is remarkable.

The transition from White-minority rule and apartheid to democracy in South Africa was achieved through protracted negotiations, consultations and political compromise. The equations of power were complex, the potential for chaos never far from the surface. P.M. Botha's scheme for limited democracy based on racial division lay in shambles. His successor, F.W. de Klerk faced a total collapse of social order and Afrikaner capital. On the other hand, total victory eluded the ANC/ SACP. There were a profusion of lesser political factions - Left, Right, African nationalist, numerous claimants to democrat, --threatening further destabilisation, while the economy and security forces remained firmly under white control.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was born out of moral imperatives, tempered by harsh political realities. The ANC was under pressure from its constituents to address the wrongs of the past. Yet, if the country was not to collapse into chaos, it needed the cooperation of many of those responsible. The 1992 Record of Understanding between the apartheid government and the ANC excluded any Nuremberg-trials of security personnel for human rights violations legally committed under apartheid legislation.

The idea for the Commission had its genesis in Kader Asmal's inaugural address as Professor of Human Rights Law at the University of the Western Cape in May 1992:

We must take the past seriously as it holds the key to the future. The issues of structural violence, of unjust and inequitable economic social arrangements, of balanced development in the future cannot be properly dealt with unless there is a conscious understanding of the past.

As a historian, I take solace in such resounding affirmation of knowledge of the past. Rarely do professorial addresses have such impact.

The idea was taken up by the National Executive of the ANC. As Dullah Omar, later remarked, "When the National Executive Committee of the ANC discussed what had happened in the country, and... in ANC training camps like Quatro, there was a strong feeling that some mechanism must be found to deal with all violations in a way which would ensure that we put our country on a sound moral basis. And so a view developed that what South Africa needs is a mechanism which would open up the truth for public scrutiny."

The National Unity and Reconciliation clause was tacked onto the draft Interim Constitution. It doesn't even appear in the table of contents of the gazetted draft. Its prose captured in simple non-rhetorical terms the problems of addressing a contentious and divisive past.

This Constitution provides a historic bridge between the past of a deeply divided society characterised by strife, conflict, untold suffering and injustice, and a future founded on the recognition of human rights, democracy, and peaceful co-existence and development of opportunities for all South Africans, irrespective of colour, race, class, belief or sex.

The pursuit of national unity, the well-being of all South African citizens and peace requires reconciliation between the people of South Africa and the reconstruction of society.

The adoption of this Constitution lays a secure foundation for the people of South Africa to transcend the divisions and strife of the past, which generated gross violations of human rights, the transgression of humanitarian principles in violent conflicts and a legacy of hatred, fear, guilt and revenge.

These can now be addressed on the basis that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu [African humanism] but not for victimization.

In order to advance such reconciliation and reconstruction, amnesty shall be granted in respect to acts, omissions and offences associated with political objectives and committed in the course of the conflicts of the past. To this end, Parliament under this Constitution shall adopt a law determining a firm cut-off date which shall be a date after 8 October 1990 and before 6 December 1993 and providing for mechanisms, criteria and procedures, including tribunals, if any, through which such amnesty shall be dealt with at any time after the law has been passed.

Needless to say, the composition and terms of reference of the Commission were hotly contested by all political parties, as well as a broad array interest groups, and individuals. Its very existence was potentially divisive in an already fragmented body politic. South Africa is a state with many nations and diverse historical experience, a plurality well beyond anything embraced within Australian multiculturalism.

The Truth Commission was established in December 1995. Given the enormous range of human rights violations, the Commission's mandate was restricted to "gross violations of human rights". It had powers to subpoena and search, as well as grant amnesty to individual on the basis of their detailed confessions.

The five-volume Final Report, submitted to President Mandela on 29 October 1998, is a shocking testimony to the brutality and suffering during the anti-apartheid struggle. The ANC, as well as the apartheid regime, found itself in the dock. Inkatha managed to secure an injunction against publication of sections of the report, but only after public hearings has aired damning accusations.

As the Most Reverend Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus, stated in the introduction;

Our country is soaked in the blood of her children of all races and of all political persuasions... it is a history with which we have had to come to terms. We could not pretend it did not happen. Everyone agrees that South Africans must deal with that history and its legacy.

We need to know about the past so that we can renew our resolve and commitment that never again will such violations take place. We need to know about the past in order to establish a culture of respect for human rights.

The object was not to bury the past, but to serve as a break with it.

Victims could recount the stories of their trauma before the Truth Commission in public hearings and move toward a measure of reconciliation, if only within themselves. For many victims, it was a therapeutic process. However the State also assumed responsibilities for compensation and reparations to victims. The Truth Commission could make recommendations for reparations to a special sub-Committee and, ultimately to the President and Parliament. In other words, the State assumed a measure of responsibility for iniquities of a previous regime.

For perpetrators, accountability though public confession offered an avenue to amnesty. Amnesty was the price of their cooperation. Victims often decried the Commission for sacrificing justice to truth. However the educative function of public justice needs to be set in the balance against punitive retribution. In fact, the much-publicised examples of amnesty have obscured numerous prosecutions. The case against Steve Biko's murderers is before the courts, while Clive Derby-Lewis failed to secure amnesty for his grudging confession of a role in the assassination of Chris Hani.

Many sought to shift responsibility for their actions or simply refused to accept the authority of the Truth Commission. There were those in the ANC who were as reluctant as were apartheid security officers to appear before the Commission or testify in open hearings about gross violations of human rights.

Fundamental to the reconciliation process was the distinction between individual guilt of perpetrators and the responsibility located within the dominant political culture. Amnesty for the individual was not seen as abrogation of collective responsibility and the needs of moral reconstruction. In that sense, the final report was not, it was part of an on-going process of revelation and coming to terms with the past.

The pressures to bury or give a gloss to the past were enormous. It is tempting to view the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a product of the convergence of historical forces. Moral will was driven by the demands for justice from the victims, an overwhelming majority who could not be ignored in the name of political expedience. However one must not lose sight of the moral courage on the part of the Commission and its chairperson, Desmond Tutu, on the one hand, and President Mandela in accepting the Report, on the other. It was the product of moral and political leadership. As the Report noted:

Reconciliation based on falsehood, on not facing up to reality, is not true reconciliation and will not last. True reconciliation is not easy; it is not cheap.

Reconciliation and Reconstruction, Unity and Peace, were key terms that reverberate throughout the Commission's report, providing its moral underpinning.

Had the Truth Commission merely sought to apportion blame or wrest apology, it would fail as a process. Socio-political realities of South Africa meant old foes were bound inexorably. As Justice Frankel wrote in Out of the Shadows of the Night: The Struggle for International Human Rights, quoted in the Report:

A nation divided during a repressive regime does not emerge suddenly united when the time of repression has passed. The human rights criminals are fellow citizens, living alongside everyone else, and they may be very powerful and dangerous.

The verdict on South African reconciliation remains open. Yet in a world in which humanism is taken for weakness and where narrow self-interest so often prevails, it stands as a beacon not only for the hope of South Africa to come but for an increasingly alienated and disillusioned generation throughout the world.